Apple's A6 Details and Timeline Emerge

MojoKid writes "For a CPU that hasn't seen the light of day, there's a great deal of debate surrounding Apple's A6 and the suggestion that it may not appear until later in 2012. The A6 is a complex bit of hardware. Rumors indicate that the chip is a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU built on 28nm at TSMC and utilizing 3D fabrication technology. While the Cortex-A9 is a proven design, Apple's A6 will be one of the first 28nm chips on the market. The chip will serve as a test case for TSMC's introduction of both 28nm gate-last technology and 3D chip stacking. This is actually TSMC's first effort with an Apple device. The A4 and A5 have both historically been manufactured by Samsung."

Comments

Unbelievable

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve's not dead two weeks and already Apple fumbles the ball. STACKED chips? How is the next iPad going to be as thin as it can possibly be when they start stacking chips?

Stacked Chips

[narcc]

I bet they'll try to patent this "innovation" -- even though they clearly stole the idea.

For goodness sake, Pringles has been stacking chips since the 1960's.

Re:Stacked Chips

[TheRaven64]

Pringles claimed that they were stacking cakes. They lost a court case in the UK over this a couple of years back - for strange historical reasons, you pay VAT on crisps, but not on cakes. Pringles had been avoiding paying VAT by claiming that, because they were made from baked dough, they were cakes and not crisps.